Sundog Rising!
Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog
poem six ways: an art installation
Medium: Internet, alphabet, two poets, Art Gallery, dice
the poem
faces poet to poet
bergman scanning
roses stitched
laboured body
doubling hospital landscape
bleeding white drawing
rats gnawing every privacy
sickly violet grape juice blood
contrasting
absolute beauty of
every perfect rose
snipped and slaughtered
black catgut criminality
reflecting
we are not violent men
yet still
silently witness
reflection
face to poet
woman to man
what have you done
the meaning of the poem
The first two lines establish Ron’s and my position, duplicating the scene with the two women from Ingmar Bergman’s Face to Face. Instead of literally using the phrase “like face to face poets from a Bergman movie” I invert the terms for a more original effect. “bergman scanning” means Ron and I are looking beyond ourselves in that particular posture.
“roses stitched” — Ron is viewing the flowers representing the genital mutilation, while the next five lines describe the video I am watching by the Egyptian woman, wherein she lies with the upper part of her body and head across the screen, eyes shut, drawing on herself the floor plan of a military hospital. Later crudely drawn grotesque rats and other creatures appear, gnawing on her body causing a sickly purple coloured liquid to overflow the scene as if the screen is bleeding.
The crudely animated hospital video starkly contrasts the startling beauty of the large blossoms Ron is looking at, marked by the horrible black stitches and what they imply of the violation committed upon the girls’ bodies the flowers represent.
The next line, the single word “reflecting”, has a double meaning. Ron and I are reflecting upon the artworks we are viewing, and the experience portrayed in the pieces reflects back on us. Neither Ron nor I are men who commit violent atrocities against women, yet except in pieces like this we silently witness the atrocities that are committed throughout the world, brought to our attention by displays such as Off the Beaten Path.
This connects to the next three lines, “reflection / face to poet / woman to man” where “reflection” has a triple meaning. Ron and I are prompted to think of the issues, reflection; in the Bergmanesque sense we become witnesses with a single personality reflecting each other; and as we are men being delivered an aesthetic message created by women, one gender is reflected upon the other in Ron’s and my reflection/thinking.
The women visual artists, the male poets, the entire human race we supposedly speak for are united in the final question that we have to ask of our supposed visually/poetically unified zeitgeist in the face of such atrocities: what have you done.
the letters of the poem, in alphabetical order
a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a
b b b b b b b b b
c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c
d d d d d d d d d d d d
e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
f f f f f f
g g g g g g g g g g g g
h h h h h h
i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i
j
k k
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
m m m m m
n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
p p p p p p p p p p
r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r
s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s
t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t
u u u u u u u u
v v v v v v
w w w w w w w
y y y y y y y y y y
the story behind the poem
Ron Romanowski invited me to go to the Winnipeg Art Gallery with him, to see a new exhibit, Off the Beaten Path: Women, Violence and Art. He’d already seen the show, and had opinions regarding the most powerful pieces. I was struck by the impact of many of the works, and by the range of expressive techniques employed. Especially by the contrast between pieces that were startlingly graphic balanced against works that were ephemeral practically to the point of invisibility.
At one point, I found Ron and myself looking across each other at two different works hung on the same wall. We had unconsciously assumed the famous Bibi Andersson / Liv Ullman pose from Ingmar Bergman’s film, Face to Face, one face in profile to the other face full on. I was looking at a video by an Egyptian artist. Ron was looking at three large representations of single blossoms from beautiful flowers against black backgrounds, marred by heavy stitches running down the front of each flower, representing female genital mutilation.
Keystone moment: here’s a poem, I thought.
the idea!
Later at the Gallery Ron and I attended a screening of Ragnar Kjartansson’s The End—Rocky Mountains, an experimental five projection video showing Ragnar and cocreator David Thor Jonsson filmed playing a half hour long song in integrated videos broadcast simultaneously on five different screens, each scene shot against a different outdoor landscape in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Early on I thought I’d enjoy the experience more without the two guys in it, as I thought they were only doing something interesting in one of the videos. The one with the piano in the middle of the frozen lake and Ragnar disappearing as he walks towards the treeline beneath the distant mountains, which I thought I had mistakenly linked with Supertramp’s Even in the Quietest Moments album cover, although it turned out I was right, so I’m pleased to discover I didn’t sound like a know-it-all idiot getting his facts wrong after all as I had made the observation out loud overheard by people I didn’t know.
As I sat there in the semi-darkness increasingly thinking how pointless the two guys in the videos were acting, I thought I should do something artistic with my poem. It obviously isn’t difficult. I’d have to write the poem first, of course. That was the least of my worries. Thinking more, I began reflecting on recently reading Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, and thought I might like to do something operating on both meta and deconstructed levels of meaning. I would present six levels, in a random order based on the roll of a game die. I worked out the details before the presentation was much older. Then I could call it art, and that would make it art. And I could joke about calling it art within the actual presentation writing (like here), making the piece self-referential and thereby even more profound/lame. It’s about feeling, not meaning. The awareness of the words themselves telling you outright what you draw from the pattern of the artistic components in an isomorphic manner by reading a component itself.
Creating a thoughtful forum for the reader on the most fundamental level of word and meaning, letters per se, qua letters and words, so the reader too can occupy this space and may ask “what may I create?” Or it’s all bloody self evident, I dunno, whatever.
This is art, because I say it’s art, and you comprehend it’s art because you’re reading words that say it is.
The videos ended, with the two guys walking away from the piano last. Then the videos started again with the two guys walking towards the piano beginning first. I left. Ron was already waiting in the car.
the words of the poem, in alphabetical order
absolute and are
beauty bergman black bleeding blood body
catgut contrasting criminality
done doubling drawing
every every
face faces
gnawing grape
have hospital
juice
laboured landscape
man men
not
of
perfect poet poet poet privacy
rats reflecting reflection rose roses
scanning sickly silently slaughtered snipped still stitched
to to to
violent violet
we what white witness woman
yet you
*******
REALITY FICTION UPDATE!
And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?
Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.
But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...
What’s happening now?
The Top Ten Contestants of Reality Fiction Too have been announced! And the Intruders are plotting more intently than ever to eradicate that number completely. In honour of the Author’s birthday week, there’ll be a host of extra pictures as Episode Twenty-Four: Pulp Fiction is gloriously illustrated with a gallery of legendary covers from the legendary Weird Tales magazine. Definitely worth a look.
Continuing Friday at: realficone.blogspot.ca
REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE
EPISODE TWENTY-THREE: STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The Imp of the Reverse
EPISODE TWENTY-TWO: FAIRY TALE
Princess NoName
EPISODE TWENTY-ONE: THE WEDDING
Dearly, Beloved
EPISODE TWENTY: EXISTENTIALISM
Face the Hangman
EPISODE NINETEEN: ABDUCTION
Abduction/Apperception
EPISODE EIGHTEEN: MELODRAMA
“Terror in Tarnation! A Thrilling Narrative in Three Acts”
EPISODE SEVENTEEN: POETRY
“landescapes”
EPISODE SIXTEEN: SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)
“Diet Ray of the Stars!”
EPISODE FIFTEEN: EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE
“The Shadow of Her Passion”
EPISODE FOURTEEN: FLYING:
“Sky Calling”
EPISODE THIRTEEN: SLAPSTICK:
“The Phantom of the Werewolf”
EPISODE TWELVE: DAIRY FARMING:
“Early One Morning”
EPISODE ELEVEN: BURROUGHS:
“Chapter Nine”
EPISODE TEN: WEREWOLVES:
“The Silver Solution”
EPISODE NINE: WRESTLING:
“Suckerslam XIV”
EPISODE EIGHT: JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:
“The Proud and the Senseless”
EPISODE SEVEN: THE JAZZ AGE:
“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”
EPISODE SIX: SUBMISSION:
“Re-Org”
EPISODE FIVE: MASQUERADE:
“The Eyes Behind the Mask”
EPISODE FOUR: SELF HELP:
“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:
Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”
EPISODE THREE: NUDIST:
“If You Have To Ask ...”
EPISODE TWO: FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:
“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”
EPISODE ONE: STEAMPUNK:
“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”
A J.H.B. Original!
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